Neoconservatives—meaning every self-avowed “conservative” who also supported the Iraq War—assured us some years ago that the war in Iraq had been won following “the surge.”

Of course, years prior to this they assured us that the war would be “a cakewalk.” Eleven years later, however, these remarks can’t but strike even the most prejudiced of observers as patently, even astonishingly, absurd, the utterances of men and women who are either grossly incompetent or out and out liars.

Courtesy of America’s invasion of Iraq, the latter today is indeed a “democratic” state. But it is also an Islamic one. And it is a place where blood continues to spill in the streets.

Ilana Mercer reminds readers of this when she alludes to the latest findings of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI). The organization found that last month alone “a total of 703 Iraqis were killed and another 1,381 were injured in acts of terrorism and violence [.]”

And these numbers do not include the casualties coming out of the province Anbar.

“According to information obtained by UNAMI from the Health Committee of the Provincial Council of Anbar, the total civilian causalities in Anbar in February was 298 killed and 1198 injured, with 189 killed and 550 injured in Ramadi and 109 killed 648 injured in Fallujah.” But because “UNAMI” has not been “able to independently verify these figures nor account for the status of those killed and injured as civilians,” the casualties in Anbar province are “extracted separately [.]”

This is, or at least should be, a scandal of epic proportions for those who endorsed this war as part of a global “Freedom Agenda.”

Yet it is not, and the neoconservatives who enthusiastically promoted Big Government to support this disaster have simply availed themselves of the catch-all excuse upon which Big Government enthusiasts of various stripes have been relying to explain away all government-induced disasters: It could’ve worked, but it wasn’t done correctly, we didn’t give it enough time, blah, blah, blah.

The thing of it is, neoconservative Republicans don’t seem to have learned a thing from this colossal mistake, a wildly foolish, reckless judgment that has left tens of thousands of human beings dead and even more maimed and displaced. Even now, they seem eager to feed into a caricature of themselves as warmongers by continuing to mock “isolationists” while showcasing the John McCains and Lindsay Grahams of the GOP every time an international disturbance of one sort or other erupts.

If Democrats weren’t worse, the GOP would be retired come this November.

Jack Kerwick

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.